Admit it. Whenever the waitress hands the kid at the table next to you an activity mat and crayons, you feel a little jealous. Right? Those big empty spaces between thick, black lines, just begging to be filled in with strokes of red Crayola. Just thinking about it now makes us want to go out and get a box of coloring pencils.

Next month, the Guilderland Public Library is hosting an adult coloring night as part of their adult craft series. And Charlene Dubuque, of Reading with Charlene and Kris, in Ballston Spa, just began hosting coloring parties — called "Color Between the Wines" — for adults. She has booked seven this month, and the first one is this Saturday.

"Coloring books are the newest thing," she said. "But adults have been coloring for a long time. In fact, I sell more [coloring books] to adults than to kids. But now that it's getting so big on social media, another consultant came up with the idea of coloring-book parties and so we've just been cashing in on that."

A coloring-book party is exactly what it sounds like. You buy your coloring books, "and basically you're just going to drink and color," Dubuque said. "It's so simple."

As Dubuque noted, more and more adults lately are "coming out" as grown-up colorers. They're doing it for fun, they're doing it for therapy, they're doing it as a gateway to more art.

When we asked readers on Facebook if they ever "ride the purple crayon," as we just started calling it, we received more than 100 responses:

"I'm 58, and I've been coloring all of my life. I once took 7 years during the '80s (on and off) to finish a Doodleart Jungle poster. I have a toolbox full of markers, colored pencils and crayons, and a drawer-full of coloring books," said Shawn.

"My kids are grown, but I love coloring in coloring books! It's all about staying inside the lines!," said Linda.

"I recently bought an adult coloring book! I keep a secret stash of crayons and pencils for Mom only!" said Debra.

And more like that. One woman I spoke with, Danielle Abbott, a 29-year-old student and mom in Mechanicville, says she colors to calm her moods; she has bipolar disorder, and when she's feeling depressed, "I come in here, color, listen to classical music," she said. "It really gets me in the mood. It helps me forget what I'm upset about. Because usually I'm upset about very little things."

Nicole M. Bromley, a psychologist at Albany Med, confirmed that hunkering down with those magic markers really is an effective exercise for stress-relief.

"Your mind is focused on just that one thing and not full of all those other things that you constantly worry about," she said. "So I think that's a big piece to it."

She compared the impulse to color to the impulse to doodle: Whether we're aware of it or not, making art — even in the simplest ways — is something most of us are compelled to do. Plus, "Anything that helps someone get out of their head can be a good thing," Bromley added.

"Adult" coloring books (meaning the illustrations are more complex than kids coloring books, not that they're pornographic, though those are probably out there, too) are available everywhere, from Rite Aid to Barnes & Noble. And there are coloring apps, too! Colorfy, for instance, or Coloring for Mindfulness (both are free at first, but then they start asking you for money to unlock more pictures).

Katherine Thayer of Albany said she uses a service called Coloring for Adults that delivers coloring pages to her inbox once a week. "I think with today's society and the fast-paced, highly technological world we live in, we never get time to slow down and enjoy the little things in life anymore.

"Sometimes you just need to slow down and enjoy the little things," she said. "Like coloring."